Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review June 5, 2000/ 2 Sivan, 5760

Arianna Huffington

Arianna
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
James Glassman
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports


The war on drugs:
Just say 'no more'


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- YOU WON'T FIND the latest good news about our war in the foreign-news section of the paper. That's because this war is being fought at home. But you won't find it in the domestic-news section, either. That's because the media are barely reporting anything outside the talking points of the presidential candidates. And George W. Bush and Al Gore would rather talk about drugs they did or didn't take than mention America's ongoing drug war -- unless to say that we need to get tougher. Elected officials are usually the last to agree with the little boy crying out that the emperor wears no clothes -- or, in this case, that the drug war has been a disaster. But yesterday's heresies are becoming today's wisdom.

"The most common reaction I get from my colleagues,'' Rep. Tom Campbell (R-Calif.), in the vanguard of drug-policy reform, told me, "is `You're absolutely right, but, boy, I'm not going to take that risk.' '' Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) is one who has decided to take the risk. " `A fanatic is someone who redoubles his efforts when he's forgotten his purpose,' '' he told me, quoting Santayana. "We need to question policymakers' sanity when the purpose -- in this case protecting people's health -- is forgotten in favor of a fanatical pursuit of the drug war.''

"We're on the cusp of this debate bursting wide open,'' said Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center, a leading drug-policy institute. "Drug-policy reform is rapidly emerging as the movement for political and social justice of the new decade.''

An overwhelming majority of Americans now feel that it's time to mobilize new thinking on our drug problem. According to a recent Zogby poll, 74 percent favor treatment over prison for those convicted of possession. And when given the chance to express their feelings at the ballot box, voters across the country -- the ground troops on the side of common sense -- have repeatedly shown their support for reforming drug policy. In Arizona, voters have twice approved a measure replacing mandatory incarceration with treatment, while ballot initiatives making marijuana available for medical use have been passed in California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Nevada, Colorado, Maine and Washington, D.C.

State legislatures are following suit. Hawaii recently became the first state to approve medical marijuana through the legislative process. And last year, Missouri passed a bill encouraging judges to sentence certain drug users to community service and treatment facilities rather than jail.

Indeed, it is at the state level that the critical mass for bipartisan drug reform is emerging. In November, Massachusetts and California ballots will have groundbreaking initiatives. The Massachusetts initiative requires that any properties forfeited in drug cases go to education or drug treatment rather than to police coffers -- a critically important reform if we are to end our distorted law-enforcement priorities. Meanwhile, in California, the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act requires that nonviolent drug offenders be sent to treatment rather than prison the first two times they're arrested. Its backers point out that the average cost of maintaining a prison inmate is $23,406 a year, while the average annual cost of a drug-treatment program is $4,300.

More evidence of this emerging critical mass comes, surprisingly, from a growing number of law-enforcement officials and judges. Although, on second thought, it's not that surprising since these front-line conscripts have seen the ravages of the war up close: overflowing prisons, devastated inner-city neighborhoods, the militarization of our nation's peace officers, ruined lives. "We look back now at things like judicial enforcement of the fugitive slave laws and wonder how we could have let that happen,'' a U.S. District Court judge told me. "I think many years from now people will look at our current drug laws that require very long, mandatory minimum sentences for low-level drug offenders and think this is a comparable kind of injustice.''

Even tough-on-crime conservatives like Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist are rethinking the mandatory minimum sentences fostered by the drug-war mind-set. Such sentences "impose unduly harsh punishment for first-time offenders,'' said Rehnquist, "and have led to an inordinate increase in the prison population.''

Finally, families of those doing time for drugs have begun to organize. "The loved ones of the drug war's victims shouldn't be ashamed,'' said Nora Callahan, who in 1997 founded the November Coalition to give families of those serving draconian drug sentences a voice. "The government should be ashamed because our nation's drug laws are the real culprit.'' Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which now has branches in 21 states, was founded by Julie Stewart after her brother got five years in a federal prison for possessing three dozen marijuana plants.

College students have opened yet another front in the fight to end the drug war: battling against an outrageous provision in the 1998 Higher Education Act that disqualifies young people for federal aid for college if they've ever been convicted of marijuana possession but not if they've been convicted of rape, robbery or manslaughter. "It was this bill that got students active on the drug issue,'' said Kris Lotlikar, national director of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy. "They resent having their education dragged into drug-war politics.''

"There is a growing acknowledgment,'' Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) told me, "that the drug war hasn't worked.'' Or as Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) put it: "The war on drugs is a total failure. It does more harm than good.'' Campbell, Nadler, Schakowsky and Paul are still in the minority -- a minority that includes some pretty high-profile pols, including New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura. But common sense finally seems to be gaining the edge on demagoguery and pandering. The government's war on drugs has become a war on its own citizens. It's heartening to see more and more people crying out that it's time to sue for peace.



Up

06/01/00: Who wants to eat with a millionaire?
05/30/00: The China bill: When failure is not an option
05/23/00: Memento Mori
05/15/00: The drug war and Colombia: Deny and escalate
05/10/00: The White Conference on Teens -- and reality
05/08/00: Elian and the drug war
05/03/00: Elian and Elio
04/28/00: Direct mail: Under the radar sleaze
04/24/00: The blues' big green: The color of health care
04/24/00: Commissioned polls: Is that your final answer?
04/18/00: For sale: America's students
04/14/00: Elian and China
04/10/00: Spring fever: dreaming of John McCain
04/07/00: Dot-com bites man
04/04/00: Al Gore: A profile in pandering
04/03/00: Tarnish on a new gilded age
03/29/00:The political Oscars
03/27/00: It's gonna take a movement
03/23/00: `P' is for preschoolers ... and for Prozac
03/21/00: The passion of St. Al
03/14/00: Colombia: The drug war's latest perverse priority
03/13/00: John McCain's dilemma: Loyalty to what?
03/07/00: Good-bye, reform; Hello, compassion
03/03/00: Campaign 2000: Who's your daddy?
02/29/00: Prop. 21: Hard to tell the poison from the cure
02/25/00: John McCain: A reformer with a red-meat strategy
02/18/00: The debates debate
02/16/00: South Carolina: The vanishing voter reappears?
02/14/00: The endorsement two-step
02/09/00: Turning Campaign 2000 inside out
02/04/00: AlGore is a big, fit liar
02/01/00: New Hampshire 2000: The battle for the independents
01/31/00: Ross to the rescue?
01/25/00: Mr. Kerrey gets the heck out of Washington
01/21/00: Debates 2000: Jokers wild
01/18/00: Cheap talk at the U.N.
01/13/00: The buying of the president 2000
01/07/00: Nailing the new millennium
01/05/00: Promises 2K
12/30/99: The year that was: They partied like it was 1999
12/28/99: The legal drugging of America: A status report
12/21/99: The political Y2K bug
12/17/99: New handshake in New Hampshire
12/14/99: The Kosovo kiss-off
12/07/99: Clueless in Seattle
11/30/99: The new callousness
11/23/99: Campaign 2000: We'll be back after these messages
11/17/99: Democracy denied
11/12/99: Our Economy's House Of Cards
11/09/99: Why Johnny and Georgie can't lead
11/05/99: Could a Kennedy be just the ticket for Al?
11/02/99: And the winner is ... Citizen McCain
10/28/99: Crime, cash and campaign 2000
10/26/99: Car bombs and character assassins
10/21/99: Money talks, Granny D walks
10/19/99: World's greatest democracy?
10/15/99: What are we looking for in a president?
10/12/99: The media's Trump l'oeil or Citizen Trump's 90-story ego
10/07/99: Grass-roots Gore and K-street Coelho
10/05/99: Summers' time, and the livin' is easy
09/27/99: The third-person way
09/27/99: How long can Americans stand Pat?
09/23/99: Fundraise-Aholics In The Senate
09/21/99: The machine to beat the machine
09/14/99: The Prosperity Parade
09/10/99: Child poverty and the working poor: the horror story we missed
09/03/99:Politicians' 'extended family' values
09/01/99: Campaign indictments: A harbinger of things to come?
08/30/99: For 2000, a race to define the race issue
08/25/99: Bush's cocaine question and the drug war
08/20/99: Hungry lobbyists gnawing away at democracy
08/18/99:Media grasping at straws
08/13/99: George W. and the corporate gravy train
08/11/99: Does Bulworth Have A Future In The White House?
08/06/99: As the White House turns

©1999, L. A. Times Syndicate